SecState Hillary said that Iran & North Korea must curb their nuclear ambitions. In the same speech, she said that the US must abandon Cold War thinking and reduce its nuclear stockpiles. She does not grasp that if we move towards zero every proliferator in the world gets more bang for the buck in its nuclear arsenal. But Iran's Atomic Energy Orgamization chief said yesterday that Iran reserves the right to enrich uranium fuel beyond commercial grade, no matter what agreement it makes in talks.
Ex-CIAer Robert Baer writes in TIME that ethnic strife is Iran's biggest worry. Another regime thorn is a prominent opposition cleric in Tehran going public, as reported by the New York Times. The cleric, who ran third in the June 12 fraudulent election, has aired politically incorrect truths about torture of protesters:
Mr. Karroubi works from a villa on a quiet street in Tehran that ends at a rundown palace once occupied by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. It is one of the many symbols of his standing among the revolutionary elite. He was jailed nine times by the shah and spent years in prison, where he grew close to inmates of widely different political persuasions: nationalist, socialist, Islamist, said Rasool Nafisi, an Iran expert based in Virginia.
“These forced companionships, Karroubi wrote in his autobiography, made him aware of the pain of the others, and relieved him from sectarian behavior,” Mr. Nafisi said.
After the overthrow of the shah, Ayatollah Khomeini put Mr. Karroubi in charge of the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee and the Martyrs Foundation, two of the nation’s most important and wealthiest institutions. He also served twice as speaker of Parliament, where he earned a reputation as a conciliator; served on the powerful Expediency Council; and was appointed adviser to the subsequent supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
So it was hard for the leadership to brand him an enemy of the state when he posted on his Web site last month an impassioned, unyielding and damning letter to the nation, written in response to the judicial finding that his allegations of the rape of imprisoned protesters were unfounded.
“The ugliness has reached the point that instead of the perpetrators and propagators and people behind this oppression, it is Mehdi Karroubi whom they want to put on trial,” he wrote. “I take refuge with you, oh God, from these catastrophes which some are causing and are not only a disgrace to the Islamic republic, but a disgrace to Iran.”
Michael Ledeen sees Iran as America's worst enemy. He sees massive, disciplined domestic opposition to the regime inside Iran & argues for a stronger US commitment to helping the dissenters.
Bottom Line. The failure of Teams Bush 43 & Obama 44 to promote regime change in Iran is the great missed strategic opportunity since September 11, 2001.
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